The routine would
never change.
Every year, at the
onset of my summer vacation, Dad, Mum and I would begin the three day journey:
drive up from Digboi to Dibrugarh airport, that is charmingly called Mohanbari,
then fly in an Avro to Calcutta, stay overnight with Babymama at 112, Southern
Avenue - enough time to see just how
much my cousins hated each other – travel from Howrah onwards to Chennai by the
Madras Mail (and later Coromandel Express) which journey took a couple of
nights, stay there for a few hours and then catch the Cochin Express to
Ernakulam, another overnight journey. We
travelled First Class, not the modern airconditioned one, but the older version
with glass and serrated windows that could be lifted up, and with the compartment
pretty much to ourselves. At times, we
had the company of VS Menon Uncle and Indira Aunty for some part of the way, at
other times we were by ourselves, but never really alone, for one can never be
alone when travelling by train.
I loved the journey as
most children do, while Mum hated it as most mums do. She had to manage much of the rations and
hated using the bathroom or indeed leaving the comfort of the coupe, so she’d
spend all her time reading or sleeping. Dad
– well, he had loads to do on the journey: he would bathe, shave, pack and
repack with neatness and precision, apply generous quantities of talc on
himself and on me to ward off the summer sweat, read, write letters when the
train was stationary (a favourite preoccupation of his, written carefully in classic,
printed handwriting), get down at all junctions to
post his letters or to fill up water (which, I conjecture, gave me considerable
early immunity), make friends easily and
peruse the timetable with curious vigour.
When VS Menon Uncle travelled
with us, I would watch him light a cigarette with a mix of awe and
inquisitiveness and wonder just how that smoke travelled inside him. Much of the talc in the bag was then shaken
into in a rolled up piece of paper to get the same effect, but it never seemed
to work as well as the real thing: the talc would blow all over the compartment,
and Mum would condemn this valiant effort at early childhood smoking. On one occasion, I inhaled deeply on Cuticura
– the original Malayali icon – and coughed until we had reached Waltair
junction.
Waltair was where I
got my annual wooden cooking set and Russian dolls, toys that kept me engaged
for the rest of the trip. That part of the
journey was possibly the most exciting, despite the heat, for the train seemed
to travel over the Godavari for ever, even as I dropped the usual ten paise
coin into the river and begged Mum for another one, without ever understanding
why we did so. And, then, we’d cross the
Krishna for a repeat performance a few hours before we reached Madras Central. Next to this station, of course, was Moore
Market, where I had to be held back in chains else I’d have bought the market
lock, stock and double barrel.
It was when we were on
the last leg of our journey that Dad would get all excited; his home was in
Palakkad, but we’d not get off there now.
Instead we would get off at Cochin, and then, in a week or two, travel
up to Palakkad by car. When the train
stopped, first thing in the morning, at Olavakkot Junction, as Palakkad’s
station was unflatteringly called, he would hop off and buy tea, halwa (yellow,
red and maroon), idlis and chutney for breakfast and two newspapers, one being
the Mathrubhumi, in an effort to pump up the local economy. During this buying binge, he would look
around at those who were getting off and getting on (he knew about seven-tenths
of the Palakkad population of his age or older) and, in general, become
animated, with a gleam in the eye, for he was the quintessential Malayali at
heart, waiting to get into a mundu.
But, it was when the
train began to move out of the station that the animation, the fidgeting, the
gleam-in-the-eye would reach a sort of crescendo.
The next station, about
fifteen minutes away, was Ottapalam, on the banks of the beautiful Neela river
(Bharatapuzha) and Dad would be all ready.
As the train neared
Ottapalam – a two minute stop -, Dad would be at the door scanning the
landscape. He had planned this out – as he
always did - by writing a letter a month in advance, enough time to receive a
response in confirmation.
And always, as the
train came to a halt, Mum and I would look out of the window and see him alight
quickly, walk up to a small, elderly, spectacled, mild-looking man waiting at
precisely the right spot, shake his hand and give him a bear hug.
“Vasu!”, CN Nair’s
gentle face would break into a smile, even as, in his happiness, the emotion
would threaten to run over and overcome him.
He would hurry forward to talk with Mum, who is a couple of years older
than his oldest daughter, and hand over a breakfast packet for all of us. While accepting it gratefully, Mum would
insist that this should not have been sent, that it was a lot of work for
Chechi (CN’s wife) and in the next sixty seconds, the three of them – CN, Dad
and Mum - would have exchanged all the news that anyone in Kerala needed to
know. As you can imagine, much of the
conversation centred around who-was-where and matrimony: marriages, proposals,
proposals that didn’t quite have the requisite CGPA, weddings attended at Guruvayoor (a favourite Nair pastime, if you did not know). I often wondered if the only two things
people in Kerala did was to get married or to attempt to get others married
off, and, of course, as I am now older and have a better understanding of these
things, I know that I was right then.
Dad would then enquire
if CN was getting his pension alright, and, if not, whether there was anything
to be done at his end.
For, you see, CN Nair
Uncle and his wife, were possibly the first Malayalis in Digboi, reaching there
at the time of the Second World War, and finding a place for themselves in an
alien culture, far away from home. They
were the courageous, cerebral, dedicated expats of yore and they
took, under their generous wing, all those who followed from their home
state. To Mum and Dad, they were foster parents: CN was the wise counsel and friend, while Mrs CN's cooking was, by all accounts, divine. They were, in some way, I recall dimly, related to us, but then all Nairs are related to each other in a web of complex quantum theory that defies normal understanding.
I wonder if CN missed his life in Digboi. Dad send him regular letters that kept him informed of the comings and goings in the little town, but, remember, that was a world in which nothing ever changed. And, in these two minutes, of course, there was little time for nostalgia.
The whistle – that marvellous
steam engine whistle that I now yearn to hear – would blow, and Dad would hop
back on and wave from the doorway, while Mum patiently explained to her son - who seemed stubbornly incapable of understanding relationships and connections - just who this gentleman was (for the sixth time). And, as the train steamed away towards the
precarious bridge over the Neela, I would press my head against the grill and
stare at the lonely, dimunitive figure on the Ottapalam station who was waving
back till we could not see him anymore.
And Dad, of course,
would get back to the coupe and write out his next letter.
